Memoir Archive

John Steinbeck: Travels with Charley in Search of America - GUEST BUTLER JULIA PIZZOLATO grew up in the heart of Texas and is a wannabe New Yorker currently living in Palm Springs, California. She gave up television for good 2

Judy Collins: Cravings: How I Conquered Food - Who doesn’t know Judy Collins? The music is burned into our memories. But the woman who made the music? If you haven’t read her memoirs, you know nothing. I am an

Julia Child: My Life in France - Julia Child would be 104, so it's understandable that, for many Americans, she looks and acts like Meryl Streep in the Nora Ephron film that burnished her eccentricities. But in

Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil - Her husband was a minister --- and a pig. You know the type: jealous, possessive, calls the wife 70 times a day if he suspects she's

Kara Swisher: Burn Book: A Tech Love Story - The most important event in Kara Swisher’s life occurred when she was five. Her father had a new job, running a department at Brooklyn Jewish Hospital. He had just bought

Kathryn Harrison: Life After ‘The Kiss’ - Most of us excavate our secrets privately. And slowly. So did Kathryn Harrison --- until, in 1997, she published “The Kiss,” an unsparing account of her predatory father and the sexual

Keeping the Feast: One Couple’s Story of Love, Food, and Healing in Italy - Rome. 1985. Paula Butturini is a correspondent for United Press International. John Tagliabue is a New York Times reporter spending a year in Rome. They have the life you may

Kurt Vonnegut: “Those years weren’t lost. They simply weren’t the way I’d planned them. Those years were adventures. Planned years are not.” - On May Day, 1970, Kurt Vonnegut --- the suddenly famous author of “Slaughterhouse-Five” --- drove from his home on Cape Cod to a hippie farm near Brattleboro, Vermont. There was

Lacks Self-Control: True Stories I Waited Until My Parents Died To Tell - Roy Sekoff was the brilliant and indispensable founding editor of the Huffington Post. Let me translate that: From 2005 to 2016, he was second banana to the founder, Arianna Huffington,

Last Words - It’s hard to get excited about a comedian when you don’t watch TV and don’t go to comedy clubs. I missed George Carlin when he was making a name for

Leave Something on the Table, and Other Surprising Lessons for Success in Business and in Life - For the last year I worked with Frank Bennack on his book, “Leave Something on the Table: and Other Surprising Lessons for Success in Business and in Life,” so I

LeBron’s Dream Team: How Five Friends Made History - When the President attacked NFL players for "taking a knee" during the National Anthem in protest of racism and police violence against African Americans, basketball superstar Stephen Curry decided not

Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls - David Sedaris launched his career by reading a seriously funny story on NPR about working as a Christmas elf at Macys. Overnight, he became our humorist laureate, serving up personal

Let’s Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship - Caroline Knapp was the author of Drinking: A Love Story. I wrote about it because some of you surely have issues with alcohol, and I thought it might be of use.

Life - When I was starting to date someone, I occasionally asked, “Who’s the most important Rolling Stone?” The typical answer, “Mick Jagger, no contest.” Sorry. Charlie Watts was the right answer.

Life in the Balance: A Physician’s Memoir of Life, Love, and Loss with Parkinson’s Disease and Dementia - The résumé of Thomas Graboys -- senior physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and associate clinical professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School --- is 24

Lift - SUPPORTING BUTLER: You can become a patron of this site, and automatically donate any amount you please — starting with $1 — each month. The service that enables this is

Lift - Hi. So much happened in my week off, all of it good, and intensely emotional. Like this: my daughter made the video for the abridged edition of “Black Beauty.” She’s

Lit: A Memoir - For a writer of memoirs, Mary Karr has had a charmed life. That is, a lot has happened, almost all of it colorful, much of it painful. And, in each

Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm during the Great Depression - And we think we have it tough. Mildred Armstrong was born in 1922, on a farm near Garrison, Iowa. When she was five, her grandfather banished her father --- sent